WASHINGTON — Two things were on my mind when I started my recently completed five-week grand jury stint. First was the not-so-old adage, perhaps first uttered by New York Judge Sol Wachtler, that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich" if he or she wanted it to. The other was the dismaying number of young black men who are winding up in our prisons.
Now I’ve got a third thing to worry over: Donovan Jackson, the 16-year-old videotaped being slammed and punched by an Inglewood, Calif., police officer.
The ham-sandwich adage, no doubt overstated, is based on the fact that grand juries hear only the prosecution’s side of things; the defendant may not even be aware that the proceedings are taking place, and the prosecutor is likely to be the only lawyer in the room.
The second is no overstatement at all. Too many young black men, particularly those without connections or financial resources, are being sent to jail, often with long mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses.
I had made up my mind that I would not lightly or unwittingly add to that dismaying trend. Any prosecutor who presented a case to me would have to have his stuff together. I would make sure that the police dotted their I’s and crossed their T’s. Cases based on profiling, on presumptions about how poor black folk behave, on sloppy police work or on the expectation that we should automatically believe the cops would produce no indictment if I had anything to do with it.
That was my intention.
Here is my humble confession: I wasn’t able to do much of anything about the stuff I had in mind. Evidence is evidence. How can I vote not to indict the guy who sells $100 worth of crack to an undercover officer and is arrested with the marked and recorded money in his possession? How can I ask my fellow jurors not to do their part in bringing murderers and rapists and gang-bangers to justice?
It’s unlikely that everyone whose case came before our 23-member panel was guilty of everything on the prosecution’s catch-all list. Surely some of them will have alternative explanations of the relevant facts and circumstances we considered. But in the overwhelming majority of the cases we heard, there was enough evidence against the accused to warrant their being brought to trial — which, after all, was what we were supposed to decide. And even that decision, which requires only a majority vote, is, by law, based on mere "probable cause," a much lower standard than the trial jury’s "beyond reasonable doubt."
Which brings me to Donovan Jackson. Imagine that the only information I had about what happened in Inglewood two weeks ago came through the prosecutor and police witnesses. Imagine that a cop shows me his scratched face and says this crazy kid did it to him, then tells me he and his fellow officers finally had to wrestle the boy to the ground in order to subdue him.
Would I be clever enough to read the false testimony for what it was? Don’t count on it. The overwhelmingly likelihood is that I’d end up voting to bring Donovan to trial (where the cards would be similarly stacked against him).
What I’m saying is that decent, even sympathetic, jurors might have wound up sending an innocent young man to prison. Indeed, the only reason Donovan Jackson and Inglewood police officer Jeremy Morse are topics of conversation is that — shades of Rodney King — a civilian happened to take video footage of the officer’s actions.
I don’t know what to say about those Americans who, judging from the radio talk shows, refuse to believe their eyes. My immediate concern, though, is for people like me who find it all too easy to believe their ears, particularly when they are listening to the uncontradicted voice of authority.
Surely Rodney King and Donovan Jackson and Philadelphia’s Thomas Jones (remember the cops standing in a circle around the subdued suspect and taking turns kicking him?) aren’t the only victims of police brutality. The reason we know their cases is that we saw the action on videotape.
On the other hand, it doesn’t follow that all untaped police beatings are unjustified. Criminals do stupid things, inexplicable things, murderous things — to cops, to innocent civilians and to each other.
So what is a conscientious grand juror supposed to do? Assume that cops usually lie? Assume that most of those accused of crimes are innocent? Demand a level of proof beyond what the law requires? Wait for the videotape?
Most, in fact, will go on believing most of what the authorities tell them — at least believing it enough to send the cases forward for trial.
Even if the cases include a ham sandwich or two.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
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